(UPDATE: RPS seems to have gotten crushed right now, probably because of a huge influx of readers to that particular article. I've read the whole thing but I'll keep my tongue in my teeth about it for now, it's certainly uhhh... one of those things that generates discussion, let's say.)

So KS and IGG are rife with scams, which I think most of us know. Not "I'm an idiot who can't run a business, so I lost everyone's money. Haha whoops. You probably would have been better off going to Vegas.", but actual outright, straight up scams from the get-go.

I will use SCIENCE MAGIC to tell you what's in this food! Oh my Christ that's fucking ridiculous.

Like, don't even start with a basic logical reply like "Mass spectroscopy on an orange, on a plate is ridiculous for a number of reasons! First...", just don't even bother. This is indubitably, indisputably, a complete, total, and utter sham.

EDIT: This one is actually not a scam, though it is a bit whimsical, I guess. I know it's wedged between two posts where I make fun of KS scams, so I just wanted to make it clear that this one is in fact legit.

When looking at the food scanner one, at first I thought "they even put the amount to reach reasonably low so they have a chance to make it and keep the cash", but that doesn't even matter, they got flexible funding so they're getting paid anyway.

Has anyone here ever done, or been involved in a Kickstarter in any meaningful way before?

An opportunity has come up for me to run a very small, conservative KS for a friend who has money, is lazy, but has already done all the hard and risky work for getting stuff made. It's a line of minis he had commissioned but just can't be bothered to sell.

It seems very solid so far. The miniatures are already cast and if we need more, additional casts will be inexpensive. My friend has more than enough money if we need to get a few more figures done for stretch goals, the sculptor (Alan Marsh) is established and reliable, and the caster (Eureka miniatures) is established and reliable.

The main goal will be to simply sell the existing stock, so additional sales to the point where we have to pay for more casts will actually be gravy. We might have minor stretch goals of a few additional figures if the math works out such that the base set is still saleable. My cut would be modest - a couple of hundred bucks, assuming we sell all the existing stock - as the main idea is jut to help recoup the original investment. He offered because a couple hundred bucks is worth the hassle of doing all this to me, whereas it isn't to him. And that's fine and fair!

I am mainly asking to see about "backend" bookkeeping things related to Kickstarter itself. I know they take 10% of profits and that in the US shipping must be free (not sure about Canada yet, have to see), but what else might someone trip over. I am trying to search for any blogs or past entries people might have had from the past year or so regarding KS campaigns, but I'm mainly turning up campaigns themselves (including a very interesting one for a VR version of the Apollo 11 mission). The most important thing I will need to do is properly calculate all costs, all potential costs, and build margins of error, then to see if those allow for additional risk factors like stretch goals (which would represent a new investment to recover, albeit a modest one).

Anybody have any experience with these? I'd like to try and make sure to calculate all additional cost factors on Kickstarter's end that I ought to take into consideration.

The biggest thing I've heard from people that have both run successful and not so successful kickstarters is that you HAVE to ask for what you need from the start. Don't low ball it so that you are more guaranteed to hit the goal. Most shit kickstarters happen because the person doesn't ask for enough money so that they wont seem greedy and then they get funded and can't pull it off because they tried to be modest.